John D. Podesta, Chair, Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Chair, Center for American Progress

Panel 1:

Raj Chetty, Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard University

Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the Luxembourg Income Study Center, City University of New York, and Director of LIS, Luxembourg

Ilyana Kuziemko, David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth, University of California, Berkeley

John Cassidy, Staff Writer at The New Yorker, contributor to the New York Review of Books and financial commentator for the BBC (moderator)

John Cassidy

John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He has written many, many articles for the magazine, on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to the Iraqi oil industry and the economics of Hollywood. He also writes a blog on The New Yorker’s Web site, entitled “Rational Irrationality.” His latest book, “How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities,” was published in November, 2009, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cassidy is also a contributor to The New York Review of Books and a financial commentator for the BBC. He came to The New Yorker after working for newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. He joined the Sunday Times, in London, in 1986, and served as the paper’s Washington bureau chief for three years, and then as its business editor, from 1991 to 1993. From 1993 to 1995, he was at the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor.

Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty is the Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. His current research focuses on equality of opportunity: how can we give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding?

Chetty was recently awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given by the American Economic Association to the best American economist under age 40. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2003 at the age of 23 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in the university's history.

Janet Gornick

Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Janet Gornick is LIS Center Director and Director of LIS in Luxembourg. Professor Gornick, who has been associated with LIS and using LIS data for over twenty years, brings considerable expertise on working with the LIS data to The Graduate Center.

Ilyana Kuziemko

Ilyana Kuziemko is a David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Professor Kuziemko came to Columbia Business School in 2012. She received her A.B. in economics from Harvard in 2000, a second BA in mathematics from Oxford in 2002 (where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar) and a Ph.D. in economics From Harvard in 2007. Before coming Columbia, she taught as an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton from 2007 to 2012. In 2009, she took a public-service leave to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury. Her research explores how government institutions impact inequality, with a recent focus on inequality with respect to health care and insurance access.

John D. Podesta

John Podesta is Chair of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Under his leadership American Progress has become a notable leader in the development of and advocacy for progressive policy.

Prior to founding the Center in 2003, Podesta served as White House chief of staff to President William J. Clinton. He served in the president’s cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. While in the White House, he also served as both an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, as well as staff secretary.

Podesta served as co-chair of President Barack Obama’s transition, where he coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees.

He is currently serving on the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

A Chicago native, Podesta is a graduate of Knox College and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he is currently a visiting professor of law. He also authored The Power of Progress: How America’s Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate and Our Country.

Emmanuel Saez

Emmanuel Saez is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on tax policy and inequality both from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Jointly with Thomas Piketty, he has constructed long-run historical series of income inequality in the United States that have been widely discussed in the public debate. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1999. He was awarded the John Bates Clark medal of the American Economic Association in 2009 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.